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The Prose Poem THE BEST OF THE PROSE POEM: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Introduction © Providence College The author(s) permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) the users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work; (4) users must make the license terms of this work clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Upon request, as holder of this work’s copyright, the author(s) may waive any or all of these conditions. The Prose Poem: An International Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) for the Providence College Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/prosepoems/ Introduction In editing The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, I feel humble and defensive at the same time. First, I am humbled by my inability to articulate anything close to absolute criteria for my "best of selections. I have read so many prose poems over the past eight years that I feel as if a large gray eraser is squatting in the hollow of my head. I am not even sure what my criteria are, anymore. Some of my contributors would agree with this perception; they have even written to tell me so. Moreover, after reviewing the past eight volumes, I am sometimes disappointed by poems that we have published, and I wonder how many good ones we let go. Since the publication of Volume 1 in 1992, I have read just about everything written on the prose poem in English. Has that made me a better editor, or has it encouraged me to look at submissions through a distorted critical lens, trying to pigeonhole poems into generally accepted categories? What a terrible failure, what a laughingstock, is the editor who is unable to recognize and to reward the rare visionary poet who succeeds in breaking all the rules—if indeed there are any rules. Yet in spite of these misgivings, I plan to defend or apologize for whatever criteria I have relied on. Readers of Socrates' Apology will remember that the Greek word apologia means "a defense," though they will also remember, with the sounds of Socrates' rhetoric ringing in their ears, that sometimes the best defense is a good offense. And so, blockhead, what were you saying about rules? Are there actually do's and don'ts for writing prose poems? Or even more aggressively: Is there even such a genre as prose poetry? I recognize, of course, the humor in editing a collection in a genre which many intelligent poets and critics do not think exists. To some, I might just as well be editing the galactic correspondences of Mr. Spock. At one Associated Writing Program Conference, a well-known poet approached my exhibitor's table, whereupon I enthusiastically offered him a free copy of The Prose Poem. He recoiled as if I were handing him a slimy, homed toad, then smugly pointed out that there was no such genre as prose poetry. "Furthermore," he said, his eyebrows twitching like two oversexed centipedes, "even if there is such a genre called prose poetry, it still isn't real poetry." "That's why we call it prose poetry," I responded, arguing that he wouldn't criticize a sonnet for not being a villanelle. He laughed and disappeared into a sea of admirers. My comparison, of course, was weak, since both sonnets and villanelles do have rules, whereas the most that we can say about prose poetry is that it exhibits certain characteristics. In this sense, its nearest literary cousin is another oxymoronic genre, black humor. Bruce Jay Friedman writes that attempting to define black humor is like trying to define "an elbow or a corned-beef sandwich" (vii.). Much the same can be said about prose poetry. In the first volume of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, I argued that "Just as black humor straddles the fine line between comedy and tragedy, so the prose poem plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels" (6). The critic wrestling with the prose poem-as-genre assumes the same precarious position. For every definitive statement I make on the genre, I recognize the prescriptive flaw in that statement, so that when pontificating on the prose poem, I feel like one of the Three Stooges, alternately slapping myself in the face with each hand: "The prose poem has its roots in the aphorism." "But what about the long prose poems of Baudelaire?" "But surely all prose poems are fables." "Then where do you situate the 'poetic prose' written by certain Language poets?" Take this, take that. Whoof! Bang! ... Concerning literary definition in general and prose poetry in par- ticular, Russell Edson, in "Portrait of the Writer as a Fat Man," states, "We are not interested in the usual literary definitions, for we have neither the scholarship nor the ear. We want to write free of debt or obligation to literary form or idea; free even from ourselves, free from our own expectations…. There is more truth in the act of writing than in what is written..." ("Portrait" 38). Edson's scorn for literary pigeon- holing also appears in a recent statement on genre distinctions. "What name one gives or doesn't give to his or her writing," he says, "is far less important than the work itself ("Interview" 86). Was Frederich Schlegel right, then, when he argued that "Every poem is a genre in itself (Monroe 245)? Yet, as many recent critical studies on the prose poem suggest (see our bibliography at the back of this volume), it does seem worthwhile to look at some definitions and characteristics of prose poetry offered by poets and critics. E. M. Cioran writes, "To embrace a thing by definition, however arbitrary... is to reject that thing, to render it insipid and superfluous, to annihilate if (7). It seems that most prose poets would agree with Cioran. Averse to the crippling, straitjacket mentality associated with definition, they circle the prose poem as if it were a crocodile. Instead of nets, they rely on metaphor, trusting in the analogical slices of our brains, which naturally embrace oxymoron and paradox. In a special issue on the prose poem in the journal Verse, Charles Simic states, "Writing a prose poem is a bit like trying to catch a fly in a dark room. The fly probably isn't even there, the fly is inside your head, still, you keep tripping over and bumping into things in hot pursuit. The prose poem is a burst of language following a collision with a large piece of furniture" (7). Simic's comparison captures both the spontaneity and the frustration involved in writing a prose poem. Like Simic, Louis Jenkins is awed by the mystery of composition, but his metaphor seems safer and more homemade. "Think of the prose poem as a box," he writes, "perhaps the lunch box dad brought home from work at night. What's inside? Some waxed paper, a banana peel, half a peanut butter-jelly sandwich. Not so much a hint of how the day has gone perhaps, but the magic for having made a mysterious journey and returned. The dried out pb&j tastier than anything made flesh" (1). And then there's Edson, who compares the prose poem to a "cast-iron aeroplane that can actually fly, mainly because its pilot does not care if it does or not." Nevertheless, this heavier-than-air prose monstrosity, this cast-iron toy will be seen to be floating over the trees. It's all done from the cockpit. The joy stick is made of flesh. The pilot sits on an old kitchen chair before a table covered with an oilcloth. The coffee cups and spoons seem to be the controls. But the pilot is asleep. You are right, this aeroplane seems to fly because its pilot dreams.... ("Portrait" 38) Edson's metaphor and his comment on literary definition are attractive to poets because he champions the unconscious and the personal imagination in its attempt to escape literary and cultural contamination. "There is more truth in the act of writing than in what is written" ("Portrait" 38). Yes! Yet is it possible at this point in time to write in a genre unaware that it really is a genre, or to be ignorant of other established genres that it resembles—in our case, the parable, the fable, the aphorism, the pensée, and so on? "Where do genres come from?" Tzvetan Todorov asks. "Quite simply from other genres. A new genre is always a transformation of an earlier one, or of several; by inversion, by displacement, by combination" (15). Whether or not we agree with Todorov, it's clear that many poets and critics have taken a similar approach to the prose poem. Margueritte Murphy wants to free the prose poem from verse, pointing to the "nonliterary language" of Baudelaire's Paris Spleen, with its "political idioms" and "slang of the streets," both of which thwart the critic's attempt to define prose poetry by "relying on the dominance of poetic functions, such as rhythm or metaphor" (89). She argues that the prose poem "remains formally a prose genre," then adds that prose poetry is ruled, "as all genres are, by tradition, if only to undermine it" (63). Whether or not the prose poem likes it, Murphy suggests, it must subvert those genres to be "other." Charles Simic also recognizes that the prose poem is a "literary hybrid," an impossible amalgamation of lyric poetry, anecdote, fairy tale, allegory, joke, journal entry, and many other kinds of prose.
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